Critical Discourse Analysis of Tourism Authority of Thailand’s Online Reports during the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2021

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Akrakan Sonthichuay

Abstract

               This research article examined the textual dimensions to reveal linguistic strategies, discourse practices, and sociocultural factors in the Tourism Authority of Thailand’s online COVID-19 tourism reports from 2021. Employing Fairclough’s (1995) critical discourse analysis and Hymes’s (1974) ethnography of communication, this study analyzed 94 texts titled “situation updates” from January to December 2021. Findings emphasized three key linguistic strategies-lexical choices, sentence types, and presupposition-that reveal how language influences ideologies regarding the nation-state and citizenship. Discourse practices consist of eight elements: situation, participants, ends, act sequence, key, instrumentality, norms of interaction and interpretation, and genres. The sociocultural practice dimensions revealed power and knowledge dynamics, which aimed at controlling citizens and transforming them into desirable members of society. In contrast, the concept of consumerism encouraged consumption and signified a return to normalcy within the tourism industry.

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References

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